Why DeSantis Can't Diffuse the "Personal Benefit" Fracas

This month, the Florida Department of Education approved State Academic Standards for public school education about slavery that have become a lightning rod of controversy due to asserting in a benchmark clarification that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” (While this has received far less scrutiny, the curriculum also appears to gloss over the Constitution’s Fugitive Slave Clause and to present George Washington, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton as antislavery despite the fact that Washington was a lifelong slaveholder, Jay repeatedly bought slaves and forced them to work off their “debt” before freeing them, and Hamilton was involved in selling, leasing, and acquiring slaves for his in-laws.) Defenders of the curriculum have pointed to other aspects of the text that presents slavery negatively and argued that the “personal benefit” benchmark clarification was merely meant to highlight the resiliency of African Americans under the horrific system of enslavement rather than arguing that slavery was beneficial. These explanations and defenses have done little to reduce the salience of this issue the for two largely-undiscussed reasons. First, even if one assumes that the benchmark clarification was taken out of context, other statements and actions by Florida education officials have given further credence to the idea that the state is attempting to present slavery as beneficial to African Americans. And second, while one might assume that DeSantis would want to diffuse this controversy and thereby bolster his general election chances by stating that slavery did not benefit slaves or their descendants, he cannot do so without jeopardizing much of the base of primary support he has built up.

The idea that slavery benefited or benefits Black people is not a new one, and has been heavily promoted by slaveholders, segregationists, and modern right-wingers. One of the main arguments used to justify slavery in the antebellum era was that slaves were supposedly better off enslaved in America than living in Africa. In an 1858 speech, Mississippi Senator and  future Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaimed, “servitude is the only agency through which Christianity has reached that degraded race, the only means by which they have been civilized and elevated.” In 1922, Mississippi Congressman John Rankin described slavery as “the greatest blessing the Negro has ever known.” Rankin did at least acknowledge the harm done by slavery—to white people. According to him, slavery was “unfortunate for the white man; fortunate for the Negro.” William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate, claimed, “Slavery among the whites was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made when—and only when—brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in favor of white supremacy.” Because the “better off due to slavery” claim was so linked to defenses of slavery specifically and white supremacy more broadly, those who challenged slavery and white supremacy were far less likely to accept the premise behind the defense. In my approximately twenty years of studying the abolitionist movement, I have found relatively few examples of abolitionists, white or black, who claimed that slavery benefited black people. Indeed, significant numbers of them, such as Wendell Phillips and Samuel Joseph May, advocated reparations. Some, such as Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, and Mary Putnam, tried to counteract the wholly negative image of Africa promoted by slavery apologists. Clarence Darrow, a son of abolitionists and staunch foe of segregation, did not wholly reject the idea that descendants of slavery were better off due to slavery but was far more ambivalent about it than his famous rival, Bryan, who favored segregation. Many modern conservatives, as well as figures on the far right, make the argument that Black people are better off due to slavery. Some, such as Dinesh D’Souza, at least concede that slaves themselves did not benefit but insist that their descendants do. Others, such as prominent fundamentalist minister Douglas Wilson, draw no such distinction, insisting that both slaves and their descendants were and are better off due to slavery.

Given the relatively mainstream nature of the “better off due to slavery” canard, it is worth debunking in some detail. Even if one accepts the false claim that modern black people are better off due to their ancestors being kidnapped and forcibly brought here, it is still obviously true that they would be much better off had they been freed upon arriving in America. Every day slavery went on after Africans were brought here created greater problems for their descendants. Thus, the question is not “Are African Americans better off today due to slavery than they would be in Africa?” but rather “Would African Americans be better off now if they had ended up in America but not been enslaved?” Conservatives bring up successful African immigrants to claim black people have equal opportunity today. This is not consistent with claims that only the alternative to slavery was living in Africa perpetually. That outlawing slavery in U.S. made slaves’ descendants better off and not worse off showcases the need to distinguish between the fact that black people ended up here, the way in which they ended up here, and what happened for generations after they ended up here. A quote from white liberal Republican Judge Wendell Phillips Stafford on how forcibly bringing “the black race” gave America a responsibility to them and made the treatment that followed an even worse violation of this responsibility rather than being somehow good for slaves’ descendants offers insight: “We brought it here by theft and force. We owed it liberty and we gave it a chain.” Finally, it is commonly claimed by conservatives that the fact that African immigrants have higher average income than native-born African Americans is evidence that racial inequity is not a significant barrier to success in modern America. (Things such as skilled worker visas are usually neglected when making these claims.) This argument contradicts the “better off due to slavery” claim for two reasons: 1. It concedes that Black people could have ended up in the U.S. without slavery; 2. If, as most conservatives do, one dismisses the idea that variables such as the number of immigrants coming here on skilled worker visas may be a factor, one must conclude from data on the wealth levels of African immigrants that African Americans could have achieved an equal or higher average standard of living than what they currently enjoy by immigrating here in the twenty-first century rather than by their ancestors having been enslaved.

What does all of this have to do with DeSantis and the new state educational standards? DeSantis himself, the Florida Department of Education, and the authors of the curriculum have fairly direct connections to advocates of the “better off due to slavery” claim. Kim Daniels, a conservative Democrat in the state legislature appointed to the Florida African American History Task Force, stated in 2008, “And let me say this to you -- I thank God for slavery. I thank God for the crack house. If it wasn't for the crack house ... God [would never have been able] to use me [as] he can use me now. And if it wasn't for slavery, I might be somewhere in Africa, worshipping a tree.” As discussed here, it appears that the Task Force was not involved in writing the curriculum standards in question, and Daniels has bizarrely criticized the “personal benefit” quote despite her own much more brazen extolling of slavery’s purported benefits. But the fact that a prominent member of the state’s African American History Task Force is on record making a comment about slavery that is eerily similar to what Jefferson Davis said in 1858 has inevitably attracted suspicion that Florida’s public education system is trying to sanitize slavery. As if Daniels’s comments had not attracted enough controversy, the Florida Department of Education announced on July 26 that it had “reviewed PragerU Kids and determined the material aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards.” PragerU’s specific resources for kids include a video about Christopher Columbus that presents the Spanish conquest as beneficial to natives, acknowledges that the Taino Indians Columbus encountered were peaceful but glosses over his well-documented brutalization of them, and presents fifteenth-century European civilization as more civilized than contemporary indigenous society due to indigenous practices of human sacrifice and cannibalism despite un-mentioned Spanish practices like burning heretics alive and mutilating indigenous teenagers for not meeting labor quotas. Most disturbingly, the video acknowledges that Columbus enslaved natives but flirts with the idea that being enslaved was better than being killed (as though Columbus and other Spaniards did not kill any indigenous people) and categorizes slavery as not one of the things that “are clearly bad no matter when they happen.” In case anyone feels I am taking parts of the video out of context, it can be viewed here. Whether my interpretation of the Columbus video is too uncharitable or not, there is little ambiguity with a PragerU video about Robert E. Lee geared toward adults. In the since-deleted video, the narrator defends Robert E. Lee and argues statues of him should remain. In the process of praising Lee, the narrator cites his leading forces to crush John Brown’s attempted slave rebellion and apparently-favorably quotes the Virginian’s statement that slavery was “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race” because “blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa.” Thus, if DeSantis and those responsible for writing curriculum standards wish to argue that slavery is not being presented as beneficial to Black people in Florida public schools, they would be wise to disavow the Florida public education officials and purveyors of Florida curriculum who seem intent on arguing otherwise.

Outside of his state’s public education apparatus, DeSantis has other connections with people intent on extolling the benefit of slavery to Black people. The Daily Wire has emerged as one of the most prominent pro-DeSantis conservative websites and media companies. According to MediaMatters.org, “DeSantis and his associated PAC Friends of Ron DeSantis have paid $110,429.01 for fundraising expenses and list rental to the site since July 2021, according to a search of campaign data with the Florida Department of State. The Miami Herald noted some of DeSantis’ payments to the Daily Wire and other right-wing outlets in April.” Matt Walsh, one of the most prominent political commentators on the site, stated earlier this year, “The point is that the push for reparations rests on the notion that Black Americans are in a considerably worse spot today than they would have been had their ancestors never been brought here as slaves … In fact, it seems rather clear that Black Americans are doing better here today than they would be had their ancestors generations ago never been brought to these shores. We can prove this point by simply asking which African country anyone asking for reparations would prefer to live in. The answer, of course, is none of them.”

DeSantis’s campaign is flailing due to a variety of problems, many of which are self-inflicted. But this particular problem has a simple solution that he seems unwilling to utilize. DeSantis could issue the following statement: “The words about “personal benefit” in Florida curriculum standards is meant only to highlight the resiliency that slaves showed under the horrific system of enslavement, not to suggest that slavery was beneficial to slaves or that they would not have learned said skills without being enslaved. To be unequivocally clear, slavery was harmful, not beneficial to enslaved people. Nor are the descendants of slaves better off today because of slavery. Any suggestion that slaves or their descendants benefited or benefit from slavery is absurd.” This statement would obviously not satisfy all of DeSantis’s critics, but it would put him clearly on record as disagreeing with the idea that slavery had or has any upside for Black people, past or present, and it would make it difficult for his critics and rivals to keep hammering him on this issue without coming off as unreasonable. So why won’t he do this? I would argue that it is precisely because DeSantis realizes that a large number of his supporters feel strongly that slavery has been beneficial to Black people and fears angering them and losing their support. This is the unavoidable consequence of running a primary campaign focused on attacking Donald Trump as overly “woke” and insufficiently conservative. There is a segment of hardline conservatives and far-rightists who were lukewarm on Trump in 2016 because they thought he was uncouth and moderate, likely voted for him grudgingly in 2020, and have rallied around DeSantis as a “true believer.” The problem is that in order to outflank Trump from the Right and portray him as woke, you have to cultivate a very extreme audience and either endorse or appear sympathetic to some truly demented beliefs. This strategy may hurt DeSantis’s chances in the general election. As of now, he seems to be struggling to get it to pay dividends in the primary. And until he can say the simple truth that Black people weren’t and aren’t better off from slavery, the headache from the curriculum standards likely won’t go away.